Diablo IV | Cheerful Ghost

Steam Deck OLED Drops, Is Incredible!

I picked up the Steam Deck some time ago and I still think it's one of the best things to happen to PC gaming. Playing the Borderlands 4K remaster and everything else in my catalog on my couch is a magical thing and if Valve releases another Deck successor, I'll buy it. Well, apparently Valve has released a new Steam Deck and it looks incredible even if it's not a massive leap forward in performance.

The Steam Deck lineup has been revamped and the Deck at the top of the heap features a stunning OLED screen, 1TB of storage, Wifi 6 and a 50 watt hour battery! Digital Foundry and other tech review outlets have put it through the paces and found the screen absolutely top... Read All

Diablo IV Quarterly Update

Looks like the development of Diablo IV is going well and as such Blizzard has released a few updates about what we can expect. A couple things I found interesting is that Blizzard is creating a more co-op friendly Diablo IV user experience. Before if you opened a menu in Diablo III co-op only one person could control their inventory at a time.
If you are playing with a friend on a console you might want to both open your inventories at the same time so they are working on providing a user experience where you can do that. Also, they are allowing controllers to be used on PC and be completely re-mappable, something Diablo III does not allow.

That a ton more is... Read All

Diablo IV Announcement

Diablo IV was announced during this year’s BlizzCon. We were able to see three classes; a druid, sorceress, and a barbarian. It looks as though the druid can transform into an animal, the sorceress can combine magic attacks, and the barbarian can dual wield.

The game play and cinematic trailers look very good! I’m glad that it still looks like a Diablo game. There is vertical terrain and mounts to help you traverse the larger map containing five regions. It seems mounts will be customizable and each class will have their own abilities for attacking while dismounting. The events of the game take place decades after the Reaper of Souls expansion. You can see Lillith, “... Read All

jdodson Admin wrote on 11/03/2019 at 11:44pm

I was mixed on seeing Diablo IV announced. The first part is I think the response by J Allen Brack about how Blizzard handled the situation with Blitzchung and the protests in Hong Kong have been horrible. J Allen opened up Blizzcon by apologizing BUT didn't say how anything would change. I find that kind of thing hallow even though he looked like he wanted to cry the whole time. Brack doesn't need to cry for forgiveness, he just needs to not bow to pressure to stop people from protesting. That aside.

My first reaction to Diablo IV wasn't great. Again, i'm not to hip on the current Blizzard situation right now but over the last few days my thoughts on Diablo IV have come around a lot and i'm firmly in the excited for Diablo IV camp.

jdodson Admin wrote on 11/03/2019 at 11:49pm

I'm pretty sure i'll be a day one Druid, the class looks incredible and I can't wait to tear though everything as one.

That said, i've been reading a lot of gamer critique of Diablo and it seems people are saying that Diablo III was a failure because it wasn't dark enough or the graphics were too cartoony. This is fairly reductive and fairly wrong as the biggest mistake with Diablo III wasn't the graphics, it was the real money auction house.

So many poor things from Diablo III rooted to the real money action house and frankly if I were in Blizzard at the time I would have supported adding one to the game. Allowing players the ability to buy and sell items for gold or real money seems like a no brainer until you realizer you have to gut the legendary and item drop rate so people have a reason to spend gold and money. One Diablo III dropped the auction house and increased the item drop rates, nearly halted white item drops and gave legendary items actual legendary stats and abilities alongside adventure mode and rifts the game really opened up. Diablo III isn't a perfect game and I think that hanging all the classes abilities/power off weapon attack seems like an odd choice (We do it in Wyvern and it's because, frankly, it's an easy thing to calculate).

jdodson Admin wrote on 11/03/2019 at 11:51pm

I'm not sure how the system in Diablo IV will work, but I hope it's not just going back to Diablo 2 because even though a lot of very vocal gamers say that's all they want, I'm fairly certain it's not. Moving the franchise forward is a better thing and I hope they take a bit of a look back at what worked with skill trees and give us a fresh take on Diablo too. One other downside of Diablo III is that they created a game for a very wide audience that left the gameplay feel a bit shallow. For someone that wants to kick back on the couch with their Switch, Diablo III is perfect but I wonder if Blizzard can build a game for hardcore players as well?

Azurephile Super Member Post Author wrote on 11/04/2019 at 12:24am

I didn't pay attention to anything regarding BlizzCon except for this announcement and I'm totally on board for it. Why weren't you initially excited for this? Was it because of the Blizzard controversy? I just watched the game play trailer and it was all I needed to get hyped. :) I'm thinking I may also be a day one Druid. Morphing looks cool! I might be a Barbarian though.

I feel like D3 was a big success, but that's just my opinion, not necessarily based on facts. It seems as though it had a bad start, but improved greatly afterward, some time before I started playing it. I recall something being said about the auction house and how that supposedly was bad. I never got to experience it. I thought the graphics of D3 were perfect. I didn't see them as "too cartoony." This argument reminds me of Zelda: The Wind Waker where people whined about its art style, which I enjoyed. I couldn't get myself to play another Diablo game, because of the dated graphics. D3 really impressed me though and I felt like what I saw of D4 was really D3 with improvements. I didn't pay attention to the graphic style, just the technological upgrade. It looked like something that was more HD or more technologically current, if that makes sense. What I want from D4 is pretty much just more D3. I like what I've seen of D4 so far. Other than what they've shown, what I want most is for the game to give us more classes to play with. Three just feels too few and makes me feel like if it's limited to that, then I probably won't want to play it as much or more than I've played D3.

I hadn't installed Battle.net/Blizzard's launcher on my new PC until I found out about this announcement. Now I'm just waiting to find out when I can order it. :) When or if I find more details I may post them here or make a new post, I'll figure that out when it happens.

jdodson Admin wrote on 11/04/2019 at 10:43pm

A few things I've watched and appreciated in regard to Diablo IV:

Diablo IV World & Lore at Blizzcon 2019: https://www.youtube.com/embed/8HMM3xnbcpU
MrLamaSC Talks about D4 (he's a huge D2 speedrunner): https://www.youtube.com/embed/Bg3mFSbkaN4
Really good gameplay demo & d4 developer video from blizzcon: https://www.youtube.com/embed/6ZtmNAMxwMM
1 hour of Diablo IV gameplay minus any streamer commentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0CntI1Ez_U

Azurephile Super Member Post Author wrote on 11/05/2019 at 02:36am

Thanks for the links. Some of those videos (at least the first according to my just clicking the link real quick and the last according to your description) seem near an hour long. So, I may check them out some time. I haven't been watching YouTube as much lately. There are some D4 videos in my YouTube subscriptions list, but I don't think I'm going to watch them. All I needed was the game play video I shared and embedded in this post. This is an odd thing to say, but I am a fan of Diablo (the games or at least D3), but I don't like blood at all. So, I could have gone without watching the cinematic, although it looked like a great piece of work, technically speaking along with the great amount of graphical detail.

Azurephile Super Member Post Author wrote on 11/09/2019 at 02:14am

"Diablo 4 - 5 BIGGEST Changes You Need To Know About" https://youtu.be/3-etWtnoGxk

There are a couple of things I want to say about these changes. The video says the game may not be out for "years." I was hoping much sooner, like one at max. But, I also realized we found out about the Warcraft III remaster quite a while ago and it's still not out, so I guess this should be expected.

One of the first things mentioned is the "shared world," in which you'll be running along side other players. You can play a private session, but you cannot play offline. If there wasn't a private session, I would probably be much more hesitant to play it. I don't want to play with strangers. I want to play D4 just the way I play D3.

What do you think about these changes?

jdodson Admin wrote on 11/09/2019 at 03:16am

I’m ok with world events and even think they might be fun. And occasionally seeing a random player here and there might be fun too. It’s nice you can turn all that off but I’m looking forward to a more shared Diablo.

Azurephile Super Member Post Author wrote on 11/09/2019 at 03:52am

I'm the opposite. When I found out about D4's "shared world" my anticipation for the game nearly died and I decided that I may have to rethink my desire for the game, but I found out you can play it alone and that made me feel better. I feel like games are getting too saturated with multiplayer aspects and they're ignoring the single player. I don't want to play with strangers. I do like playing with friends, though. There are "MMO" games I like to play, like Ark: Survival Evolved and Atlas. These two games have a single player mode, but too much in them is still much too difficult to do alone and I hate it. I believe that is why the most recent expansion for Ark was a sever disappointment to me, it added more things that pretty much require multiplayer. Monster Hunter: World is kind of like this, too. You create an online session, but you're not automatically paired up with other players. However, there is content you can try to do on your own, until you get your ass kicked badly and realize that that content is not for the single player. I feel like the single player game is dying or obsolete and now a "revolutionary" idea. This is my most recent video game rant. Tale of the White Wyvern is different, pretty much, in my mind. You don't have to do PVP (I don't, because I don't want to) and interacting with other players is fun, even humorous at times. But, that game doesn't kick my ass for not trying to do something in a group when I'd rather play alone.

jdodson Admin wrote on 11/10/2019 at 04:52pm

> I feel like games are getting too saturated with multiplayer aspects and they're ignoring the single player. I don't want to play with strangers. I do like playing with friends, though.

They are for sure because that's what keeps games alive long after the single player is played. In some cases it's done fairly well, like with Rage 2.

Azurephile Super Member Post Author wrote on 02/26/2021 at 01:27am

I just found a new article from GameSpot about Diablo IV, which includes new information released at this years BlizzConline. In it, you'll find a video I'd never seen showing off the classes, it's a must-see. Check it out: https://www.gamespot.com/articles/diablo-4-everything-we-know-so-far/1100-6487815/

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